Japan is Beating the Drums

[setsuled]

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That's Japan's prime minister, Takaichi Sanae (on the right), drumming with the South Korean president, Lee Jae Myung. The first song you hear them drumming to is "Golden" from the KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack, an interesting choice given that it was at least cowritten by Americans, if not entirely written by songwriters who are products of American culture. Of course, the movie itself was released through Sony, a Japanese company.

I worked for five years in Takaichi's hometown, Kashihara. I don't find her mix of conservatism and rock and roll at all strange, although many of the residents I talked to in Kashihara about music disliked rock, or if they tolerated it, it was nothing heavier than The Beatles. A lot of students did talk to me about their love of rock, particularly early in my tenure. Over time, students seemed more and more inhibited by the Eye of Hazukashi (embarrassment), preventing them from directly speaking of their musical interests. But I still remember the student who was an avid fan of Nirvana and the student with whom I chatted about the differences between punk and metal.

I was thinking about the irony of Takaichi, a woman who has cited Margaret Thatcher as an influence, adopting the trappings of punk. A punk rock Margaret Thatcher is kind of like a Joker Batman. But of course, she's not punk, she's metal, which is almost as opposite to punk as Thatcher was to punk. Punk is about breaking down institutions and oppressive traditions while metal often paints pictures of decadent and cruel satanic hierarchies. I asked a teacher what bands specifically Takaichi likes but he was too much of a partisan to give me an honest answer, telling me her favourite band is XJapan. A google search tells me she in fact favours Deep Purple and Iron Maiden among other influential metal groups while mentioning XJapan as a favourite Japanese group.

But it's fair to say there's something rebellious in Takaichi's spirit. Fareed Zakaria said as much when comparing and contrasting Takaichi with Britain's Keir Starmer. Takaichi has been seen being quite chummy with Trump, who, despite what the American left would like to believe, is about as punk as a politician can be, despite his leanings to authoritarianism. But that's the pattern, isn't? There's the punk of breaking down the institution before there comes the metal of erecting the edifices of a new authority. I'm not sure Trump has the discipline to do that, but Takaichi undoubtedly does.

She's a hawk who wants to change Japan's constitution to allow the country to have a proper military again, empowered to start wars, and with her super-majority thanks to the snap election just over week ago, she may well get what she wants. Outside observers may ask, to what end? Is this the dog chasing the car, not knowing what it'll do when it catches it? With Japan's population decline showing no sign of slowing, this seems hardly the time to for colonial ambitions. Takaichi's anti-immigration policies make even less sense than Trump's. But it didn't make much sense for Japan to enter World War II as Japanese intellectuals said at the time. It was a matter of pride and competitive instinct more than anything. Has Japan gained enough capacity for critical thinking in the years since World War II to stop another such military snowball effect? Time will tell.

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